Charities, social enterprises and funders need access to the best data, tools and systems to measure their social impact well. Substance will lead Inspiring Impact’s work to develop the infrastructure needed to ensure the sector can review, access and use the best quality data, tools and systems.
Read about current projects under this theme below.
Online impact marketplace research and feasibility study
Impact measurement is currently hampered by the lack of a mature market for impact measurement tools—questionnaires, survey tools, or performance management systems. New tools are emerging that vary in quality and usability, and work is needed to bring the most robust and useful tools to the market. An increasing number of charities and social enterprises seek off-the-shelf tools and systems, but lack the skills to select the right one.
The demand is there and supply is growing too, but we need the infrastructure to help charities and social enterprises review relevant tools, make informed decisions about which are right for them, and purchase them in a smooth, efficient way. There are several ways we could do this: for example building an online directory or impact marketplace, making use of search engine optimisation, social media, wiki and semantic web technologies.
We are researching and testing the feasibility of these different options, looking at the scale of demand, scale of supply, and potential for sustainability. We are currently prototyping am online marketplace that will make tools available for planning, managing, measuring and reviewing your impact.
We would like to invite you to review the Inspiring Impact Marketplace Prototype and let us know what you think. The link above will allow you to review an online illustration of what the marketplace might look like, the type of content it might present and the user journey.
The link will take you to a homepage, and subsequent pages can be accessed by clicking on the orange tabs at the bottom. We recommend that you work your way through these tabs sequentially in order to get a sense of the proposed user journey. Feel free to post comments as you go – there is an option to leave comments at the bottom of every page, and and vote on others’ comments.
We are keen to get as much feedback from the sector about the online marketplace at this stage as possible, to inform the further development of the tool. We’d love to hear your views, so do visit the site, comment, and let us know if you think this is a resource you would use.
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